


The Name Game

by Rehearsal_Dweller



Series: Twin Trade AU [2]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Gen, Obviously there are two Authors but I felt weird about character tagging them separately, PARALLEL UNIVERSE!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-12
Updated: 2015-07-12
Packaged: 2018-04-08 21:57:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4322253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rehearsal_Dweller/pseuds/Rehearsal_Dweller
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which a lab accident leads to three seven-year-old Stans, with varying degrees of... Stan-ness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Name Game

**Author's Note:**

> HAVE SOME TINY STANS!
> 
> ~~Also, for the record: no matter what happens on Monday, I'm not changing the Stans' names. The reason I have the Stanford/Stanley composition as it is in the _first_ place is that with everything else I was shaking up for Falling Hard, it seemed a bit excessive/confusing. So for the sake of my - and your - sanity, I'm leaving it as is.~~
> 
> EDIT: As of 1/10/15, the Stans have been switched to match GF canon.

The day started out perfectly normal. Well, for a given definition of normal.

Stan and Lee were hidden away downstairs, doing their sciencey thing. Ford was in the gallery, doing his charlatan-ey thing. The Mystery Twins were working in the gift shop with Wendy, doing their twin-ey thing.

The day started out perfectly normal. Well, for a given definition of normal.

Stan and Ford were hidden away downstairs, doing their sciencey thing. Lee was in the gallery, doing his charlatan-ey thing. The Mystery Twins were working in the gift shop with Wendy, doing their twin-ey thing.

Only there were occasional loud bangs and crashes from the basement, which was starting to draw the attention of customers.

“I’m gonna go down and tell them to shut up,” Lee announced to the room at large. “I’ll be back before the next tour.”

“Kay,” Max, Ursa, and Wendy said in dull unison. Lee shrugged and went downstairs.

Two minutes later, there was one more loud bang, followed by a low thunk. Three minutes after _that,_ Lee still hadn’t come back upstairs, and it was past time for the next tour to start.

“Yo, May-B, go be Granddad,” Max said, checking the clock. “I’ll go down and see what’s up.”

“Gotcha,” replied Ursa, nodding. She ran through the _Employees Only_ door into the main residence to change lickity-split, so as not to keep the group milling about the front door waiting too long.

Max wasn’t too concerned with speed on his way downstairs; if something had gone _really_ wrong, they’d have been able to tell from upstairs.

Max… was wrong.

He got into the basement, and was immediately tackled by someone a fair bit smaller than anyone who ought to have been in the basement.

“Who are you?” asked a tiny voice.

Max blinked a few times, and a young boy in a way-too-big button-down shirt came into focus just above his face. “Who are _you?”_

That got him a tiny knee to the stomach. “I asked you first!”

“Lee, get off of him,” another little voice reprimanded.

“Yeah, Lee, get off of – wait, Lee?” said Max, stunned.

The boy rolled off of Max and straightened up. “Yeah, what’s it to ya?”

Max sat up. There was another boy, nearly identical to apparently-Lee, standing nearby and wearing an absurdly large lab coat. “And you’re… Ford?”

The boy nodded. “Yeah, how’d’ja know?”

“I – where’s Stan, then?”

The boys looked at each other. “Huh?”

“If you’re Lee and Ford, there should be one more of him,” Max pointed to the boy in the lab coat, “floating around somewhere.”

Both boys pointed into the next room.

Max jumped to his feet. “I’ll… deal with you two in a minute.”

Tentatively, he moved into the next room, tapping on the door with his knuckles as he passed it. “Stan? Uh, Stanford?”

There was another little boy curled up in the far corner. He looked up at the sound of his name. “Who are you? Where’s my brother?”

“Oh no,” Max said under his breath. “Heey, little guy. My name’s Max. Your brother is – uh, it’s complicated, but he’s not here.”

Tiny Stan sniffled. “I didn’t think so.”

“It’s okay, though,” Max said quickly. “We’re your family, too. Those guys in the next room are like your brothers; you’ve been living with them for a long time.”

“I’m seven,” said Stan, frowning. “And I’ve never met them ever. One looks like me, and the other one’s Lee, but he’s _not_ Lee!”

“Yeeeah,” said Max. “You know what? My sister can probably explain this better than I can. C’mere.”

He held his arms out. Nervously, slowly, Stan uncurled and approached him. He let Max scoop him up and hooked his arms around Max’s neck.

“Yo, tiny Stans!” Max called, walking back into the first room. “Come with me, we’re going upstairs to find you smaller clothes!”

\--

When Ursa finished her tour, she went looking for Max.

She found him in the attic, with three little boys who looked vaguely familiar. One was sitting on Max’s bed, wearing a too-big t-shirt and shorts. The other two were bouncing on Ursa’s bed and playing with Waddles, respectively.

Max was kneeling on Waddles’s other side. “Come on, Lee, you’ve got to put on some clothes that fit.”

“Why should I listen to you?” the boy playing with Waddles asked rudely. “You’re just a _kid_.”

“Oh yeah? Well I’m a bigger kid than you, that’s why!”

“Uh, Max?” Ursa said, confused. When her brother looked up, she signed, “ _Who are they?”_

_“Granddad_ ,” Max signed back, gesturing to the boy on Ursa’s bed, “ _and his brothers,”_ he pointed to the other two.

“You’re kidding,” Ursa said out loud.

“I wish,” said Max, shaking his head. “Tiny Stans, this is Ursa. Ursa, these are the shrunken Stan Squad. Please, please tell me you can turn them back.”

“I’ll, uh… I’ll have to work on that,” Ursa replied. “Should we close up shop, or –“

“We’re almost at the end of the day,” Max said, shaking his head. “If there’s anybody waiting for a tour, give ‘em one. I’ll, uh, babysit.”

“I could walk _them_ through the tour,” Ursa suggested.

“Yeah, this one’s not going anywhere until he puts on pants,” Max said, nodding toward Ford. “The others can go, if they want.”

Stan, who was still sitting quietly on Max’s bed and playing with a hole in the blanket, shrugged. “I’m okay here.”

Lee jumped off of the bed. “I wanna go!”

“Alright, shortstuff,” said Ursa. “We’re going downstairs.”

After a moment’s hesitation, she held her hand out to Lee. He took it automatically, and started to swing their hands as they walked down the stairs. “So what are we touring? Where are we? How did your brother know who we were?”

Ursa rubbed the back of her neck with her free hand. “Well, we’re in Oregon.”

“Oregon?” repeated Lee, sounding sceptical.

“Yep,” Ursa said. “In a town called Gravity Falls. This is the Mystery Shack, but you’ll hear the spiel about that downstairs. And as for Max… Honestly, I’m not sure what to tell you, Lee. I don’t think you’d believe me. But trust me, we’re working on, uh, getting you home.”

“Sure.”

They didn’t speak again until they were about to walk through the front door to meet the last tour group of the day. “Hey, Lee, you’ve got to promise me you’ll be good during the tour, alright?”

Lee rocked back on his heels. “O _kay_.”

“Let’s go, then.” Ursa pushed the door open.

The group waiting outside wasn’t too large, but it wasn’t insignificant. A nice end-of-day tour size.

“Step right up, folks!” Ursa called. “I’m Miss Mystery, granddaughter of the proprietor of this fine establishment.” The crowd gathered, instantly fascinated. “When my great uncles came to Gravity Falls nearly 40 years ago, they found themselves surrounded by incredible things. They, along with my grandfather, decided that someone needed to catalogue these incredible, impossible, and mysterious things. This –“ she gestured to the Shack, “is the culmination of their hard work. This is my grandfather’s greatest achievement.” She grinned, winking with her uncovered eye. “Ladies, Gents, and everyone else – welcome to the Mystery Shack.”

She kicked open the door behind her as she spoke, and waved for everyone to proceed into the main gallery.  Lee was the last one in before Ursa, and only that because she was nudging him forward with a hand between his shoulders.

“Who’s your grandpa?” he asked her eagerly, looking around. “Do I get to meet him while we’re here?”

“Uh, we’ll see,” said Ursa, rubbing the back of her neck nervously. “I mean, we’ll do our best. Now I’ve got to get on with the tour.”

\--

“Hey, little Stan,” Max said gently, shaking the boy’s shoulder. He’d fallen asleep on Max’s bed while waiting for Max to get his double into clothes that fit. “It’s time for dinner, bud.”

Stan stretched. “Already?”

“It’s six,” Max pointed out.

“Oh,” said Stan, stretching again. “Wow. What’s for food?”

“I have no idea,” admitted Max. “Ursa, Soos, and Lee cooked.” He paused, frowning. “Actually, you know what? I do know. I am 97% sure we’re going to order a pizza.”

Stan jumped up, bouncing on the mattress. Max let him climb onto his back and carried him downstairs, hopping every few steps to get a giggle out of the smaller boy.

They did, in fact, order a pizza.

They ate it camped out in the living room, picnic-style. It felt weird to sit around the table with the tiny Stans; they took up so much less space than usual but had _so_ much more energy.

Max could see the shadows of their adult selves in them, but was mostly left with the feeling that they were little strangers. Like distant cousins, maybe, who he’d met once at a crazy family Thanksgiving-reunion when they were toddlers.

Lee was enthusiastically telling a (probably heavily embellished) tale, complete with wild gesticulation and almost putting his foot in the pizza by accident. His brother seemed to be only half-listening, nibbling idly at his pizza and looking around with wide eyes.

Stan kept to himself, occasionally looking enviously over at the other boys, who were laughing and play-fighting their way through the meal. Max couldn’t imagine how he must be feeling, to suddenly wake up all alone, with a copy of his sister who wasn’t really her. Instinctively, he reached over and patted Stan’s foot sympathetically.

It was bad enough the guy’d been separated from his twin 30 years back; at least then he’d done it more or less on purpose.

“- and then we’ll go down to the lab and see if we can’t figure out what happened to you guys,” Ursa was saying. “Honestly, nothing down there that I know about should’ve done this, but obviously…” she trailed off, waving a hand across the three of them.

“Why should we believe that you’re telling the truth about what happened to us?” Ford asked sceptically. “You could be lying. You could have kidnapped us!”

Max rolled his eyes. They’d already hashed this out upstairs. “You’ve been outside, Ford. Did that _look_ like New Jersey?”

“No, but kidnappers don’t have to stay in the state they did their kidnapping in,” Ford countered.

“We’re twelve,” Ursa pointed out. “And you were all running around in grown-up clothes when Max found you.”

“But it’s _impossible_ ,” Ford insisted. “We can’t have aged backwards at _all_ , let alone fifty years!”

“It could be possible,” said Stan. It was the first thing he’d said since they’d come downstairs. “There was some pretty a’vanced technology downstairs. An’ plus it wouldn’t really make a difference, fifty years or five minutes, if the tech worked.”

“And anyway, I doubt that it was intentional,” Ursa said. She shook her head. “At the very least, you’d have told us. And how to make you big again.”

“But we didn’t?” asked Stan, frowning.

“That sounds reckless,” said Ford. He shook his head. “I’m not that stupid.”

“Sure, y’are,” Lee said, punching his brother’s shoulder. Lee punched him back, and Stan picked at his pizza.

\--

“We are not qualified to be responsible for seven-year-olds,” Ursa said flatly. “We’re barely qualified to be responsible for _ourselves_.”

Max shrugged. “Well, yeah. But what are we supposed to do?”

“I guess just –“ she waved around at the lab equipment. She sighed, running her hands through her hair. “Guess.”

\--

“Yo, tiny Lee!”

“Hey, big Ursa!”

Ursa chuckled. “Alright, fair enough. Do you want to help me with the tours today?”

Lee flopped over the arm of the chair, so his head nearly brushed the floor. “ _Do_ I!”

Ursa screwed up her face, trying to figure out whether this was an affirmative answer or a question. “Is that a yes?”

“Duh.”

“Just checking. C’mon, squirt.”

\--

Ursa spent her entire lunch hour sitting in the lab, trying to sort out what the Stan Squad could possibly have been trying to do when they had – apparently accidentally – regressed some 50+ years.

She banged her head against a non-buttony panel. “How do you even do something like this by accident?”

She would have liked very much to indulge in her most visible nervous habit – running her hands through her hair – but Max had French braided it so neatly this morning and she didn’t want to mess it up. Instead, she settled on groaning dramatically.

A little head poked around the doorframe. “Can I help?”

“I don’t really think there’s much you can do, Stan,” said Ursa, reclining in her wheely chair and staring up at the ceiling.

“I did it in the first place, didn’t I? Or the other me,” Stan reminded her. “Maybe I’ll remember something.”

Ursa gestured for him to have at it; it’s unlikely that he’d make things any worse.

Eventually they were joined by the other pint-sized Stanford, and Lee (and Max, who seemed to be remembering how this whole thing began).

Nobody knew exactly who did it or how, but one moment everything was tiny Stans and frustrated pre-teen Pineses, and the next everything was back to normal.

Well, for a given definition of normal (one involving three sixty-two year old men in twelve-year-olds’ clothing).

After they’d explained to team Stan what had happened, and team Stan had done some investigating into their own investigation, the incident was declared Definitely Absolutely Accidental, Let Us Never Speak Of It Again on the Stanley Pines Accident scale.

\--

That night, Max added an addendum to Rule Four in Ursa’s Journal (Ask for help if you need it): “Don’t be embarrassed; odds are, whatever you screwed up, Stan, Lee, or Ford have done worse.”


End file.
